Ideas and Inspirationshttps://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas
Ideas for free. Take one. But YOU have to make it happen.Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:59:30 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.5Idea #7: Decrypt Internet Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policieshttps://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2011/07/28/idea-7-decrypt-internet-terms-conditions-and-privacy-policies/
https://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2011/07/28/idea-7-decrypt-internet-terms-conditions-and-privacy-policies/#respondThu, 28 Jul 2011 22:50:33 +0000http://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/?p=54Idea An Internet service that explains the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policies that other services on the Internet have published. A consumer should be able to enter a URL to a T&C or Privacy Policy and this new service can decode the legalese described in the documents by using crowd sourced experts that summarize them into easy to read…

Idea

An Internet service that explains the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policies that other services on the Internet have published. A consumer should be able to enter a URL to a T&C or Privacy Policy and this new service can decode the legalese described in the documents by using crowd sourced experts that summarize them into easy to read and “to the point” formats. Consumers can install web browser extensions that enable them to easily click on a button that will automatically query the service and present the simplified report on screen when they arrive at a new website or are creating an account. If a website is unknown, the user can submit the new site to the service to request that the community analyze the T&C and Privacy Policies. Once analyzed, the new summaries become available to the public for review upon arriving at the websites.

Problem Statement

There are thousands of incredibly popular services, hundreds of thousands of well known services, and millions of lesser known services and websites on the Internet. Most of these services use a Terms & Conditions document that describes the terms that the company or individual provides the product or service with, as well as the conditions under which the terms apply. Additionally, they provide a Privacy Policy that describes what the company or individual will do with the information they gather about you (account, name, age or birthdate, location, IP address, etc). These documents exist in the case that a legal case occurs where they are being sued or held legally accountable for some reason and these declarations will protect them because you are “signing” that you acknowledge and agree to these documents when you create your account and check the box.

While these documents do disclose a company’s or individual’s intentions, as well as protect it, it does nothing for the end-user who is required to read and “sign” them. They are incredibly lengthy, often contain boring boilerplate paragraphs and provisions, and are written in “legalese” (a form of english particularly aimed at lawyers). In other words, they are difficult to read, unless you practice law or have experience with law. Most people simply will not read them. Companies know that most people don’t read these documents which gives them an opportunity to inject unreasonable requirements. This gives companies an opportunity to prey on consumers knowing that they will not read the documents.

Consumers do want to know what companies are doing with their information, as well as understand what the terms of their new “contracts” are when they accept a T&C or Privacy Policy. In current form they are simply too complicated since no one has the time to decode them. By providing a service that generates a unique summary report for every T&C and Privacy Policy document on the Internet, consumers can understand what a company is requiring their users to agree to before they make the commitment to accept the document.

Market

Consumers who sign up for any accounts or use any Internet service that has a Terms & Conditions or Privacy Policy document.

Example services requiring agreement to a T&C:

Facebook

iTunes Music Store

Yahoo! Mail

Google+

Just about any message board / forum

Revenue Strategy

Government consumer protection agency grants/funding

Browser licensing for API access

Donations

Advertisements

Feasibility

The creation of crowd sourced document summaries would require creation of a service that provides reputation mechanisms and attracting qualified and interested individuals to continually analyze, interpret, and summarize T&C’s and Privacy Policies. Community participants would need to award members who submit accurate and useful summaries in order to encourage valid information submission. Community leaders would need to also help moderate and verify information submitted to avoid presentation of invalid information to general users of the service.

It may take 3-6 months of active community involvement before the database contains enough submissions to be useful to most users.

Value

Founder/Developer Value

Notoriety for creating a service that helps individuals

Satisfaction from helping people

Low profitability

Buyout potential by a company that makes a major web browser

Investor Returns

Low profitability

Buyout potential by a company that makes a major web browser

Consumer Returns

Easy to understand T&C and Privacy Policy documents

More control of what services to use based on personal requirements

Ability to call out companies who misrepresent themselves or take advantage of consumers

(This was inspired by a conversation on Google+ started by Mike Elgan about how most of us typically click to accept and agree with T&C’s without first reading them since they’re lengthy and not written in simple form. Come join the conversation.)

]]>https://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2011/07/28/idea-7-decrypt-internet-terms-conditions-and-privacy-policies/feed/0Idea #6: Television Network for Well Produced but Canceled Showshttps://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/11/10/idea-6-television-network-for-well-produced-by-canceled-shows/
https://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/11/10/idea-6-television-network-for-well-produced-by-canceled-shows/#commentsThu, 11 Nov 2010 04:25:49 +0000http://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/?p=43Idea A television network that is available as a pay channel on traditional cable/dish broadcast services that focuses on airing and subsidizing the creation and continuation of high-quality intellectual and artistic serials that other networks would cancel or have canceled due to general disapproval by the general populace. It would also be available as a subscription service on the Internet…

Idea

A television network that is available as a pay channel on traditional cable/dish broadcast services that focuses on airing and subsidizing the creation and continuation of high-quality intellectual and artistic serials that other networks would cancel or have canceled due to general disapproval by the general populace. It would also be available as a subscription service on the Internet for those who have decided to not use traditional broadcast services.

Problem Statement

Television networks are unwilling to take risks. As there has been a shrinking of the number of networks due to the continual condensing by acquisition, competition for high viewership numbers is intensely existant between the few large television networks. This leads to relying on moving television shows around to various slots where “eyeball counts” are expected to be high. When surveys show that these counts are dropping, a show is moved or dropped, regardless of whether or not the show is of quality nature and has a reasonable viewership. The major networks simply care about the highest number of viewers.

The more people watching a television show, the higher chances the show is generic and lacks content outside of the standard formula. Intellectuals often require content that is not as interesting to the general populace because many people are simply looking to television to provide them with “brains off” entertainment. There is simply too many of these types of channels already available, so when a network experiments with bringing on a smart show it is generally overruled by the public, and the show is canceled.

Thus a new network is required to come along and cater to intellectuals and pick up these shows that are canceled, as well as stimulate the creation of new shows under their label.

Market

Intellectuals and artists who value high-quality television entertainment who value shows such as Caprica or The Event, although not necessarily slanted towards science fiction.

Ideal candidates:

Science fiction fans

HBO fans

People who read The Economist

People who enjoyed the numerous shows that NBC canceled

Revenue Strategy

Advertisements

Syndication licensing

Broadcast licensing

Viewer subscriptions

Feasibility

The SyFy (previously Sci-Fi) channel has had much success bringing on genre-focused science fiction entertainment for 20 years. Much of their content has been subsidized in-house and has the SyFy label on it. HBO has also had success creating high-quality content over the years by requiring a viewer subscription. This new network could be modeled very similarly to HBO, with a key difference that HBO focuses on being brash rather than intellectually oriented.

Building this network would require a significant investment from large investment groups, and to be successful will require very experienced C-level partners with extensive connections in the production and broadcast markets. This is no small feat, but the returns could be significant.

Value

Founder/Developer Value

Great profitability and ROI

Excellent exit opportunities by potential buyout & IPO

Investor Returns

Great profitability and ROI

Excellent exit opportunities by potential buyout & IPO

Viewer Returns

A place to call home for artistic and intellectual television programming

]]>https://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/11/10/idea-6-television-network-for-well-produced-by-canceled-shows/feed/1Idea #5: Manage Desktop Context for Increased Productivityhttps://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/09/07/idea-5-manage-desktop-context-for-increased-productivity/
https://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/09/07/idea-5-manage-desktop-context-for-increased-productivity/#respondTue, 07 Sep 2010 23:40:53 +0000http://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/?p=36Idea Desktop software that “plugs in” to the operating system and desktop frameworks to give the professional more control over the application instances by means of controlling visibility, location, and creation of application windows for particular contexts of focus and productivity. The user should be able to fully configure their own contextual needs, which should be based on activities they…

Idea

Desktop software that “plugs in” to the operating system and desktop frameworks to give the professional more control over the application instances by means of controlling visibility, location, and creation of application windows for particular contexts of focus and productivity. The user should be able to fully configure their own contextual needs, which should be based on activities they spend a majority of their time in (assessed on their own, not automatically). The user would toggle these contexts, shifting the visibility and location of application windows on their desktops and virtual desktops to meet the needs of the chosen context.

Problem Statement

The Internet brings with it a lot of excellent knowledge, communities, and has changed the face of business forever. But it also brings a lot of distraction. Since there is a never ending number of websites and applications for people to experience and play with, valuable focus time is lost. On desktop environments, users must continually fumble with moving their application windows around, and manage starting and stopping applications as their needs change. Users generally load the same applications and place their windows in approximately the same position repeatedly, day in and day out. Demanding and changing business needs (as well as personal interests and activities) force the user to increase the number of application instances and window movements dramatically. This leads to productivity loss, although minute and seemingly meaningless at the time, becomes excessive when added up over time. This really should be easily mitigated by the computer, and should not be a continual user process.

Additionally, users want to regulate themselves and keep themselves focused. Users, at times, would like to force themselves into focus so that they are more productive and at less risk of being distracted; the software should prevent any other activities from taking place while focusing in a particular context (“allow list”).

Example contexts:

Communication: email, web forums, instant messages

Development: IDE, web browser for research/documentation, web browser for looking at product and development progress, simulator

Switching between the example contexts requires a lot of work, such as starting the needed applications, positioning them on the desktops and virtual desktops, laying them out across multiple monitors, and ending unnecessary applications.

A number of competitors exist to solve portions of these problems, but do not address the high level issue of changing contexts.

Market

Professionals and students who primarily use their desktop/laptop computers for work or research. Immediate submarket would be users who have identified a need to increase productivity and want to “get things done.”

Ideal candidates:

Software/Internet developers and designers

Investors

Students

Researchers & authors

Revenue Strategy

License purchases

Advertisements in limited trialware/freeware version

Licensing to Operating System development companies (requires patents for protection!)

Sell code/rights to an Operating System development company

Feasibility

The product would require some lower (although not true low-level) access to system APIs, which seem to be accessible on most major platforms (OS X, Windows, Linux), and could be developed by an intermediate to expert desktop developer. Actual implementation is very feasible, with a caveat on proper user experience evaluation. Success of the product is largely determined by the market’s summed opinion of how easy it is to use with actual increase of perceived productivity level increase.

This product could only be sold to large Operating System companies if the market adopts it and patent protections are already in place. These companies have been known to implement popular boutique applications on their own since these protections were not already in place.

Value

Founder/Developer Value

Reasonable profitability and ROI

Investor Returns

Reasonable profitability and ROI

Business Customer Returns

Employees increase productivity which could increase profitability

Employees increase ability to focus which could increase quality

Employee/Public Returns

Increased productivity

Increased focus

Reduction of menial activity

Increased simplicity

]]>https://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/09/07/idea-5-manage-desktop-context-for-increased-productivity/feed/0Idea #4: Track Internet Censorship and Ethical Violations by Fortune 5000 Companieshttps://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/07/12/idea-4-track-internet-censorship-and-ethical-violations-by-fortune-5000-companies/
https://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/07/12/idea-4-track-internet-censorship-and-ethical-violations-by-fortune-5000-companies/#respondTue, 13 Jul 2010 01:17:35 +0000http://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/?p=28Idea Create a website for tracking censorship and ethics histories of large corporations. Users can contribute specific examples of censorship by providing links to web resources that have been censored by the owning company, such as a forum posting that has been deleted. Then a link to a reputable cached version of that deleted resource is provided in order to…

Idea

Create a website for tracking censorship and ethics histories of large corporations. Users can contribute specific examples of censorship by providing links to web resources that have been censored by the owning company, such as a forum posting that has been deleted. Then a link to a reputable cached version of that deleted resource is provided in order to prove the censorship, such as by archive.org or a search engine like Bing or Google. Additional annotations and user contributed metadata can be provided to additional resources & articles that further elaborate on the issues. An API can be created so that other services can integrate and mash up, to increase awareness and provide more useful services and applications.

Problem Statement

Corporations are, in 99% of cases, only loyal to their stockholders and board of executives. Most people by nature are good. But stockholders want profits from their investments, either by dividends or price growth, or both. To accomplish this, C-level executives feel the pressure to make profits for their company at all costs, even if some questionably unethical decisions are made. The government and the people represented by the government do not often hold companies liable for many unethical actions (or even questionably unethical ones) because it is notoriously difficult to manage a public driven legal effort (class action suit), assuming that laws were actually violated. For extremely large multi-national organizations (MNOs), legal cases that are lost hardly affect the profitability of the company, and thus do not necessarily prevent them from acting unethical again. In essence, many companies already have a legal budget in place for these situations. They’re expecting it, because they often know they are acting questionably unethical.

Another common problem is that companies censor any negativity against their products or the company at large, by legal threats against website owners (cease and desist) and deleting forum threads on their message boards. Companies do this to protect their “perfect image” to avoid any public discussion about the true state of a problem. This is often just a single piece of a company’s PR spin, but it’s often a very effective one.

The most effective way to punish companies that take advantage of the public in some way is to simply not buy their products. When reading any forum about how a company got away with something that people don’t like, you will see statements along the lines of “Well, if you really want to take action, then why don’t you stop buying their products?” The biggest problem with launching a large boycott against a corporation is being able to reach other people about the problem, and then centralizing an organizational effort to encourage and promote the boycott. Besides, other people who haven’t experienced the same problem will most likely not understand or believe people who are complaining about that issue.

In order to increase public awareness of companies that leech on the backs of taxpayers, consumers, and other public resources, a service could track and monitor activities that the corporations are doing. A grade or rating can be created to score corporations on their ethical behavior, and users can see a more detailed report that identifies and annotates the proof material that makes up the score.

Market

Consumers and businesses looking only to support companies that are ethical and responsible.

Revenue Strategy

Advertisements/Sponsorships

Government grants for consumer protection and awareness

API subscription fees for commercial applications

Consumer/business subscriptions for monthly magazine-like reporting, similar to Consumer Reports

Feasibility

The core product, a website with an API, can be built with very little upfront investment. Seeding the site with initial data would require hunting out instances of current and/or past examples of censorship and ethics violations, and finding ways to annotate and prove the violation occurred. This may prove to be difficult until the product has received enough public awareness, and the general consensus that this is actually needed.

Value

Founder/Employee Returns

Salary

A philanthropic effect

Positive notoriety in the public sector

Negative notoriety in the corporate sector

Public Returns

Safer consumer environment

Public interests are protected

Public has more collective power to punish unethical companies, and reward ethical ones.

Consumers can feel confident knowing that their dollars are supporting companies that are making positive change, or at least not negative change.

Investor Returns

There is not a very lucrative financial return for investors

Investors can receive the notoriety of protecting consumer interests from unethical corporations

]]>https://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/07/12/idea-4-track-internet-censorship-and-ethical-violations-by-fortune-5000-companies/feed/0Idea #3: Location and Context Aware Emailhttps://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/06/29/idea-3-location-and-context-aware-email/
https://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/06/29/idea-3-location-and-context-aware-email/#respondTue, 29 Jun 2010 22:07:27 +0000http://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/?p=23Idea Create mail applications and/or mail client plugins that allow people to view their email with consideration to where they currently are and what they are doing. Webmail providers, such as gmail, could easily determine location as well using the location APIs now built into browsers and browser extensions. Some mail providers are letting users categorize their email using tags,…

Idea

Create mail applications and/or mail client plugins that allow people to view their email with consideration to where they currently are and what they are doing. Webmail providers, such as gmail, could easily determine location as well using the location APIs now built into browsers and browser extensions. Some mail providers are letting users categorize their email using tags, instead of just using folders. Harness the location and tags to determine how mail fits into what the user wants to see.

Problem Statement

Now that email is available to people at all times on all devices, it is more important that email is clean of spam, and information is relevant to the task at hand. To facilitate this “cleanliness of mailbox” users often delete promotional emails from mailing lists that they signed up for, since the advertisements for the discounted wine seem spammy while they are busy at work, even if they like that wine shop. Emails from their favorite gadget shop or electronics store seem unimportant at the time as well. Delete. What if they could be ignored until the user is in a location that is more tuned to the mail? Once the user is at a bookstore, then the weekly Barnes & Noble mailing becomes more useful and interesting. The user’s mind is tuned to that line of thinking, and the email becomes less like junk, and more like supplemental content for their current context. The same thing applies to other kinds of mailing lists. Programmers subscribe to programming mailing lists, but the lists often contain information that is not immediately applicable, until the user is actually programming (or at least, working in some way). If the user is on their vacation, that programming mailing list content is likely to be deleted or at least ignored. Since email is one of the most popular forms of communication, the needs to be a way to better filter and manage the content coming in.

Market

Consumers and businesses looking to refine the way they interact with their email streams in an effort to make it more useful and more relevant to what they are doing, and thus improve productivity and profitability.

Revenue Strategy

Software licenses for new email client

Technology sold to large email service providers

None, given away as free software to encourage innovation.

Feasibility

This could be created with minimal effort, and may not require excessive knowledge of email clients if written for ones that had a plugin API such as Mozilla Thunderbird or MailPlane. Others will require more effort, or may not be extendable directly. Integrating with webmail service providers would be the most difficult endevour, and unless there is clear revenue potential, will not be worth the time and effort to pursue, but would have the most impact overall. This idea is very useful, but difficult to monetize.

]]>https://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/06/29/idea-3-location-and-context-aware-email/feed/0Idea #2: Wireless Access Metrics for All Carriershttps://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/06/28/idea-2-wireless-access-metrics-for-all-carriers/
https://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/06/28/idea-2-wireless-access-metrics-for-all-carriers/#respondMon, 28 Jun 2010 22:23:55 +0000http://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/?p=17Idea Create a website that show consumers what real world access is like for wireless telephone carriers across the United States (and potentially the globe). Now when users decide to shop for a new carrier, perhaps because they’ve moved, or because their contract has expired, they can pick the one that performs best for them in their area. It should…

Idea

Create a website that show consumers what real world access is like for wireless telephone carriers across the United States (and potentially the globe). Now when users decide to shop for a new carrier, perhaps because they’ve moved, or because their contract has expired, they can pick the one that performs best for them in their area. It should allow users to upload real-time and historical data about signal quality, dropped calls, bandwidth tests, and service plans.

Problem Statement

Seemingly a problem across all wireless carriers, consumers complain about the quality of their experience using wireless carriers. Dropped calls, bad signal pocket areas, and the inability to use their phone in or near their homes entirely. This problem exists across all carriers in all regions. However, there are a lot of consumers who like their service for certain carriers in certain regions. The quality of such signals seems to vary on a personal level, and are caused by a variety of factors, such as: density of population using the technology, buildings reflecting signals, buildings containing metal meshes, quality of the phone itself, deployment of technology by the service provider, and wireless tower placement. There is a market for consumers who are looking for consistent wireless service, and want to be able to easily determine this without having to discover this themselves.

Market

Consumers and businesses who are looking for more consistent, useful, and advanced wireless services in their particular region and regions that they travel to. The market is not restricted by device or region, as it applies to all wireless consumers, everywhere, as this is a universal problem.

Revenue Strategy

Wireless Service Provider Referral Fees & Kickbacks

Data Partnerships (cellular web stores can integrate the metrics data via a web service, so that they can inform their users which service is best for them based on their criteria)

Advertising & Sponsorship

Consumer Subscription (like a magazine or known consumer watchdog website, charge to access this information)

Feasibility

Highly feasible through use of automated applications that run on user devices. Some information is subjective, such as dropped calls (as of right now, it is not easy to automatically track dropped calls, so you would have to rely on user’s opinions). Information such as signal strength is different on each device, and the server software processing these submissions would need to take that into account so that the data is normalized and averaged properly. In order to increase usage of the automated tools, users should receive some form of compensation, such as telling them that this information will be used to improve service for their area by increasing awareness.

]]>https://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/06/28/idea-2-wireless-access-metrics-for-all-carriers/feed/0Idea #1: Publicize Banks and Credit Unions Who Fund Small Businesshttps://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/06/20/idea-1-publicize-banks-and-credit-unions-who-fund-small-business/
https://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/2010/06/20/idea-1-publicize-banks-and-credit-unions-who-fund-small-business/#respondSun, 20 Jun 2010 08:19:21 +0000http://kevinelliott.net/blogs/ideas/?p=10Idea Create a website that tracks which small and medium sized banks and credit unions actually fund a high number of small businesses and have the highest success rates. Then, publicize these lenders to the general consumer market, so they can elect to store their personal money there, which will subsequently increase the number of loans made to small businesses.…

Create a website that tracks which small and medium sized banks and credit unions actually fund a high number of small businesses and have the highest success rates. Then, publicize these lenders to the general consumer market, so they can elect to store their personal money there, which will subsequently increase the number of loans made to small businesses. Hopefully, this results in an extremely positive stimulus to the economy, restoring millions of jobs. This helps to reward the banking institutions that help America, and punishes those that pray on hard working citizens and businesses.

Problem Statement

The economy is still in the dump. Small business has the largest potential to hire millions of Americans, and form the foundations of free enterprise in the United States. The big banks (as well as smaller banks) have been bailed out, but are refusing to fund the creation and sustainability of small businesses. This stifles job creation, and keeps millions of Americans out of work, and thus slows down the recovery of the economy entirely.

Market

Consumers looking to store their existing and forward moving wealth in safe accounts, while receiving an honest return, and wanting to help the country (and thus the world) by stimulating the economy, restoring jobs, and improving the life and conditions of millions of Americans.

Revenue Strategy

Government Subsidies and Grants

Advertising & Sponsorship

Referral Fees (take a small percentage of a loan or deposit deal)

Consumer Subscription (like a magazine or known consumer watchdog website, charge to access this information)